


Grammar Nazi Sermon: "I Was Stood, He Was Sat, She Was Laid." Argh......

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bad Spelling & Grammar, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4296360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To stand, to sit, to lie. Past tense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grammar Nazi Sermon: "I Was Stood, He Was Sat, She Was Laid." Argh......

First, yes: I do know Grammar Nazis can be annoying.  
Second, yes: I do know that many fic writers are young, or not native English speakers, or speak separate sub-dialects of English, or honestly do not give a rat's ass.  
Third, yes: I do know that, for a range of reasons, it has ceased to be "appropriate" to correct people's errors, not least because on AO3 it cannot practically be done in tactful privacy.

That said, some of our best writers, whose overall English is superb on all counts, seem unable to manage the past tenses of the verbs of location...and over time it has reduced me to wanting to weep. Writers I delight in, who appear to use the present tense perfectly, "I sit, I stand, I lie; he sits, he stands, he lies," etc., over and over go to hell in the past tense, and announce that "I was stood by the window," or "he was laid on the bed," or "they were sat on the sofa," rather than "I stood at the window, he lay on the bed, they sat on the sofa." Or the equally correct, "I was standing, he was lying, they were sitting." The key issue appears to have to do with a reflexive longing to use "was" to indicate past tense, then double down on the past by using the past-tense form. Or perhaps it is a struggle to indicate the character is already in location, rather than actively moving in the past to sit, or stand, or lie?

There are plenty of good sites and books that can help writers choose correct tense forms for these positional verbs...that said, there is also a simple rule of thumb.

The most common usage will be the unadorned past tense: I sat, he sat, she sat, they sat, we sat. I stood, he stood, she stood, they stood, we stood. I lay, he lay, she lay, they lay, we lay.  
If you want to use the passive voice to indicate an action already under way and continuing over time, or just adore "was" constructions, you can use the past continuous: I was standing, he was lying, they were sitting.

If you use "was stood," or "was lain/laid" (lie and lay bring a different discussion), or "was sat," you are in an uneasy limbo that leaves the sense of the characters as mere objects, like furniture, left out by another's hand. You can say of a doll that it "was stood" in a corner. Even then you would be better off with "a doll stood in the corner." You really don't want to say people were stood.

Here is the thing...the people most often making this class of mistake are often otherwise amazingly good at English writing skills. It just breaks my heart when someone who could pass as a trained and well-educated native speaker of polished standard English screws the pooch over and over with the continued use of " was stood," etc. It is not just one writer, either, but several.

Just from a professional position it really would be best to lose this habit--it trips the reader and raises questions of fluency over and over.

That is all. Grammar Nazi Sermon now concludes. I do hope it does someone some good in fic writing, resumes, cover letters, theses, etc..


End file.
